How We Grew BOC’s Transactions by 71% & Revenue by 61% via Paid Media

The Brief

BOC approached RocketMill in December 2016 looking for help encouraging new and existing customers to purchase via their online shop. The brief was to do so via Paid Media methods.

We were tasked with growing awareness of the online shop, attracting new customers and switching existing customers from calling to purchasing via the website instead.

Our objectives were to:

Increase revenue

Increase transactions

Bertram Greenhough, CRO Campaign Manager, discusses how our team worked iteratively to solve this unique challenge.

We built a great relationship with BOC and got to a really collaborative phase where we would discuss new ideas weekly. We would share ideas and advise from a tactical/paid media viewpoint, and they would advise from a target market or company capabilities point of view, which allowed us to improve performance significantly.

Justin VaiciulisSenior Paid Media Executive

The opportunity

To ensure we could optimise BOC’s paid campaigns as effectively and efficiently as possible, our strategy covered all areas of the funnel and multiple customer segments, from researchers to purchasers.

Step 1: Attracting new customers

The brand is widely recognised in the UK, so branded keywords were already exceeding search volume when compared to generic terms, like ‘industrial gas’ or ‘gas cylinder’.

To tackle this effectively, we optimised the account structure to allow us to easily split ads between brand and non-brand keywords, as well as generics and non-generics. This enabled us to introduce potential customers at various stages of the funnel. For example, those searching for ‘welding gas’ were likely to be researching, so we’d bid less here than on those searching for ‘buy acetylene cylinder’, where intent is higher.

As development work wasn’t an option, we reviewed where traffic was sent to ensure the most relevant landing pages were being served – minimising the user journey and increasing the likelihood of conversion.

We then replicated the AdWords account onto Bing. Although usage isn’t as high, over a quarter of UK internet users choose Bing, allowing us to reach an audience BOC were previously missing.

Additionally, the brand had never utilised Shopping Campaigns. Being an eCommerce site, there was real opportunity here so, alongside our account optimisation, we set these up.

Finally, to amplify reach, we expanded into other areas. We noticed a growing audience in Ireland, so duplicated UK campaigns here and managed to increase revenue by a further 10%.

Step 2: Bringing customers off the phone and onto the website

BOC had a base of existing customers – some of which had an online account – that weren’t using the shop to order products. Instead, they were calling the customer service line.

This led to unnecessary call centre costs so, to encourage shoppers online, we utilised custom match audiences. Using the email addresses of existing customers, we began reaching out to them via paid search and display.

We segmented audiences into four buckets and adjusted ad copy to attract the right people, before amending bids to suit the likelihood of conversion.

Step 3: Remarketing to potential purchasers

The final step was to set up remarketing activity to re-engage potential customers. We built a remarketing structure that targeted all stages of the funnel, beginning with those who had visited BOC’s other online properties, including the corporate website and blog.

Our remarketing lists included:

People who visited the shop and didn’t purchase

People who viewed at least one product and didn’t purchase

People who added at least one product into the cart, but didn’t purchase

People who purchased

We then targeted them with a custom message and varied bids depending on the likelihood of conversion. The lowest tier being those who had just visited the shop. We then increased bids on those visiting specific product pages and upped it further on cart abandoners. We bid the most on those who had converted in the past.

Our remarketing channels expanded beyond Google Adwords, to include:

Bing

Facebook

Google Display Network

Programmatic

The Results

To recap, our brief was to increase revenue and transactions year-on-year through BOC’s online shop.

During the year, we saw significant, impressive improvements to the performance of our campaigns; all whilst reducing the monthly spend.

Improving online transactions

When comparing November 2016 (the brand’s best performing month prior to working with RocketMill) with November 2017, online transactions increased by 71%.

Increasing revenue

Year-on-year, revenue also grew by an impressive 61%.

When comparing spend in November 2016 with November 2017, we also saw a decrease of 47% – an impressive drop considering the admirable uplift of transactions and revenue.